Produced by Bill Tozier, Barbara Tozier, Mary Meehan
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

The Haunted
Chamber

By“Theduchess”

1888

CHAPTER I.

The sun has “dropped down,” and the “day
is dead.” The silence and calm of coming
night are over everything. The shadowy twilight
lies softly on sleeping flowers and swaying boughs,
on quiet fountains—­the marble basins of
which gleam snow-white in the uncertain light—­on
the glimpse of the distant ocean seen through the
giant elms. A floating mist hangs in the still
warm air, making heaven and earth mingle in one sweet
confusion.

The ivy creeping up the ancient walls of the castle
is rustling and whispering as the evening breeze sweeps
over it. High up the tendrils climb, past mullioned
windows and quaint devices, until they reach even
to the old tower, and twine lovingly round it, and
push through the long apertures in the masonry of
the walls of the haunted chamber.

It is here that the shadows cast their heaviest gloom.
All this corner of the old tower is wrapped in darkness,
as though to obscure the scene of terrible crimes
of past centuries.

Ghosts of dead-and-gone lords and ladies seem to peer
out mysteriously from the openings in this quaint
chamber, wherein no servant, male or female, of the
castle has ever yet been known to set foot. It
is full of dire horrors to them, and replete with
legends of by-gone days and grewsome sights ghastly
enough to make the stoutest heart quail.

In the days of the Stuarts an old earl had hanged
himself in that room, rather than face the world with
dishonor attached to his name; and earlier still a
beauteous dame, fair but frail, had been incarcerated
there, and slowly starved to death by her relentless
lord. There was even in the last century a baronet—­the
earldom had been lost to the Dynecourts during the
Commonwealth—­who, having quarreled with
his friend over a reigning belle, had smitten him
across the cheek with his glove, and then challenged
him to mortal combat. The duel had been fought
in the luckless chamber, and had only ended with the
death of both combatants; the blood stains upon the
flooring were large and deep, and to this day the
boards bear silent witness to the sanguinary character
of that secret fight.

Just now, standing outside the castle in the warmth
and softness of the dying daylight, one can hardly
think of by-gone horrors, or aught that is sad and
sinful.